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Category Archives: Tidy News

We survived it…..’The Beast from the East’ followed by ‘Storm Emma’. What a whirlwind of a few days we have had. After leaving work early on Thursday to beat the snow, Mike made the decision that it was too treacherous to come into work on Friday. It was touch and go for a while as although the forecast predicted snow for our area, it took ages for it to finally arrive.

Finally Portsmouth had joined the rest of the country, and we were eventually ‘snowed in’. For us we enjoyed a lovely prolonged three day weekend. We had copious of snowball fights with like-minded neighbours, we played numerous games of Frustration with the kids (when we were not outside), and we doused ourselves with an ongoing supply of tea and hot chocolate. Even the cat, who has never seen snow before, had a mini fight in the garden with it. Evidently the snow won, as she promptly came back inside the warm house.

Back to work on Monday morning, and most evidence of the white powdery cold stuff has gone…..apart from a small sad remnant of the neighbours snowman in the front garden. For us I believe we have had the best scenario. A three day weekend with snow on Thursday, fun on Friday, and all gone by Saturday. We are well aware that other people in the UK however have had a very hard time of it. With the news reporting water shortage, power failures, school closures, food shortages and treacherous road conditions, I feel we have got off with it very lightly.

Fortunately for us, we have not had a major day of catching up because of our day off on Friday. The majority of our clients were also like minded and either took the day off, or had limited staff in. The kids are back to school, work is back to normal and we are back to our normal ‘Monday morning rush out the door’ routine.We can only hope that those in the worst affected parts of the UK will get back to normality as quickly as us. Looking out into the garden this morning was the welcome site of blooming daffodils…..nothing says ‘Spring and Hope’ more!

Over the past few months Tidy Design has been working closely with NHS England to design and develop a web based portal for expecting mums. It was great to receive some glowing feedback from the project manager yesterday…

“We chose to work with Tidy Design as they had designed another local maternity app ‘mybirthplace.org’. We have been so impressed with the experience we have had; having regular updates and contact with the team. When we have wanted changes made these have been undertaken in a timely manner and we always experienced a very professional and dedicated team… Thank you so much for your amazing work!” – Donna Evans (NHS NORTH EAST HAMPSHIRE AND FARNHAM)

You can find out more about My Maternity at mymaternity.org.uk. Below I have uploaded a batch of illustrations I created for this project:

I think as February approaches, everyone sighs a relief that the long, cold and wet month of January is finally over. I think the only person that I know that likes January is my niece, as her birthday happens to be slap bang in the middle of the month.

So what has Team Tidy done to make this month a little more perkier?!? Well Jonno just recently returned from his first trip to Amsterdam…he loved it so much, that he is booking to go back in July.

Luke is hoping to book a trip to New York in April to watch the UFC (if like me, you have no idea what this stands for, a quick Google search confirms that is means ‘Ultimate Fighting Championship’). And Mike and I have a booked a family Summer holiday for us and the kids.

I have always been a firm believer that you need to have something to look forward to. You could argue that you should be living now and not in the future, but the the thought that in a few months time I will be sitting on a sandy beach where the only problem that may arise is the indecision of which cocktail to drink, does put a smile on my face.

After a long Christmas break and the passing of New Year, it always feels like a new beginning. New projects are coming in, old projects are drawing to a close, and new business ideas are circulating around the office. January is a tough month for most of us, but its also a month that gives life a major spring clean. Dry January is a big example of this, as is diets and exercise. So maybe we shouldn’t be too hard on the first month of the year. Just look at what its provided so far…..new Tidy projects, booked holidays and half price bedside cabinets. Not bad for a long, cold and wet month!

We are finally here… December! Since our last blog post, Team Tidy has been extremely busy with several new and existing projects. Jonno has been a trooper developing and supporting software for Kidney Research UK.

Luke has been busy designing a new and exciting web app, MyMaternity, which enables women to make informed decisions on where they can have their babies.

Mike’s feet rarely touch the ground and has had two meetings and a conference in the past week alone. And as for me, I have been dealing with VAT deadlines, payroll, invoicing and the incredibly important task of hanging the tinsel up.

We have settled nicely into our lovely new office at Port Solent, and we are building some nice friendships with other fellow businesses within the building. Julie, the manageress of Pure Offices regularly puts on a coffee morning, with the last one being held on Halloween. Each office could enter the pumpkin carving competition, and we are very proud to announce that Mike won the competition with his fantastic design!

I have now informed him that we will be entering the gingerbread house competition which is being held at the office Christmas get together, much to his dismay.

Mike has also put his creative flare to good use, with some amazing illustrations that he drew for the project MyMaternity. For all the parents out there who have had a baby of their own, we know that during pregnancy we become obsessed over how big our baby is compared to a fruit or vegetable. Mike has drawn 36 illustrations all of fruit and veg, which enables the user of MyMaternity to see what size her baby is during her weeks of pregnancy. We are still however unsure what a Swiss Chard is, even after several Google searches of it.

We now have less than 3 weeks left till the big day, and with home and the office decorated with all sorts of festive treats, we are ready for the main event. Our workload however is far from complete… With impending deadlines and more meetings in the diary, we are still firing on all cylinders and there is no chance of winding down just yet. But when it reaches the evening of the 22nd December, you can be sure that we will all be well and truly ‘clocked off’ for a gloriously long week and a bit.

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year, thank you for reading.

Rosie

IMPORTANT NOTICE: Our Tidy Design office will be closing on Friday 22nd December (mid-day), and re-opening on Wednesday 3rd January 2018. If anything urgent crops up during the festive holidays then please do email support[at]tidydesign.com, we will get back to you ASAP!

We are very proud to see the launch of one of our new websites… Albatross Paragliding! This website was commissioned by a client whom we manage a couple of sites for. These include ET Games, and MonkeyPuzzle.

The spec for Albatross Paragliding, was to have something simple and to include a paragliding video as a central element within the site. The video sees Dave (the instructor) paraglide over the stunning scenery of Hampshire.

Overall, the new site and logo took Mike a few days, and we feel the simplistic look gives the site a fun, fresh and exhilarating look. The pictures and video have also provided a great topic of interest within the office….would you or wouldn’t you?!?!

Whilst on holiday in Italy this summer I did a lot of drawings, most of these doodles got given to my two boys who coloured them in, however a couple I kept for myself… Below is an olive tree, a quick pen sketch I did following a drive around Umbria, viewing its many olive gardens.

Here are a few photographs I took of an olive garden, some pretty spectacular scenery;

Following my olive tree sketch I started work on an olive tree branch, probably my favourite doodle of the holiday…

Personally I find illustration, fine art, painting etc a great escape… It really helps me to unwind and switch off from the busy World we live, a World heavily influenced by tech, social media and computer screens. So to conclude; I hope you liked my olive tree / olive branch sketches, please visit our illustration page for more tidy art, doodles and paintings…

It’s been a busy period here at Tidy Design. After several years being based in Old Portsmouth we’ve decided to move on to a more fitting web dev environment.

We’ve said goodbye to the seaside view and quirky Royal Naval Club building and replaced it with the brand new high tech offices at Pure Offices in Port Solent. It’s a very different feel from what we’re used to but the modern furnishing, high speed broadband, and opportunity to expand makes it a welcome transition.

It’s not only the move that’s been keeping us busy. Website updates, redesigns and software projects (Yes you read that right, Tidy Design do more than just web development) have been making sure the new office is filled with tapping keyboards. Some of our latest redesigns include The Queen’s Hotel Portsmouth and TEG English language colleges, be sure to take a look! On the software side of things Jonno has stepped up to the plate taking over the development reins on ASSIST-CKD, our Kidney Research UK project in partnership with the NHS and is doing a fantastic job.

Unfortunately as our focus has been placed on clients our own website has become slightly neglected. Not anymore though, we will be dedicating some time to this and soon you’ll find a fresh website with a updated portfolio so you can see all of our current up to date projects. Keep your eye out for our new website launch which will be coming soon…

I am from an era where the internet did not exist at one point in my lifetime. I have just turned 30, and by no means do I feel old….yet! I even remember listening to a debate over the radio which my parents had put on in the car many years ago, on encyclopedias v internet. Need I say more.

It still amazes me however, how technology and the web based world has evolved in the last three decades. Many of us will remember watching Back to the Future II, and thinking how amazing would it be to have a telephone conversation with someone where you can actually see them at the same time on the screen! Who knew that 28 years later, we would all be making those sort of phone calls on a daily basis and not have to worry about any extra charges for it.

I was also from a generation where the mobile phone was only just coming into popularity for both the old and young folk. I think I was 14 years old when I got my first phone. My 7 year old nephew has his own iPad!

With this advance in technology, it opens the world of possibility to people. It can create knowledge, power and even love. However it can also create a lot of issues that perhaps people never foresaw. As a Mum of two boys, I worry about giving them a facility where the world (good, bad and ugly) is at their fingertips.

For now though I have comfort that they do not know my password for my phone or iPad, and they have never asked for it….yet!

The only one advance in technology that still hasn’t come to fruition, is the expandable pizza that takes two seconds to cook. One can still live in hope.

As a start in a 2017 effort to update and revamp TidyDesign.com, we have upgraded to HTTPS, the security-concerned friend of HTTP.

HTTP stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol, and it denotes the set of rules computers use while communicating in HyperText (web pages) over the web. That HTTP’s rules underpin the web can be seen in the typical URL – “http://website.com”. The prefix to that address denotes the protocol in use.

You may have noticed that more and more sites over the past decade are labelled with a different prefix – “https://website.com”. This denotes that the site is accessed over HTTPS; or HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure. HTTPS adds security concerns to HTTP’s base ruleset, ensuring that all transferred data is encrypted, undamaged and travelling to an authenticated recipient (in other words, HTTPS helps ensure that you are actually browsing Amazon.com, not someone pretending to be Amazon).

For the modern web, HTTPS is important. There’s no way around it. HTTP doesn’t concern itself much with secure communication, because the original purpose of the web was just to share textual information. The modern web, by which we trade personal details millions of times a second, requires a more secure underlying ruleset. When you’re sending someone your credit card details to make a purchase, you’re going to want that to be encrypted – it’s as simple as that.

There are reasons other than adapting to industry standards to upgrade to HTTPS, from SEO to simple consumer reassurance. Google ranks secure sites higher than insecure sites by default, so upgrading is a good first-step for getting to page one. Consumers are becoming more aware of security concerns on the web, too – largely thanks to that green padlock you see next to secure web addresses in the browser – and are less likely to provide any details over an insecure connection. The sound theory is that if you provide a secure connection, your customer is much more likely to contribute to your business with confidence.

Implementation of HTTPS for a domain involves purchasing a certificate from a Certificate Authority, and some server configuration. Those certificates verify domains as being owned by the people who claim to own them, facilitating the green padlock your users will see. Here at Tidy, we’re happy to provide this service and set up secure connections, moving the web forward and growing your business – just give us a call, or send us an email.

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Here at Tidy Design our mission is simple; to deliver a return on investment, be it for our customers or the staff we employ, working together we will do better. Each day we set out to offer our customers a quality service, the goal being to leave a long lasting and positive impression. Happy customers result in repeat business.

The staff we employ are very important to Tidy Design, our ethos is to look after each other and grow together. We aim to learn and do better in all aspects of life, this mindset is key to growth and development.

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